Reading, listening to, and questioning America... from the southern Great Plains

Clinton v Bush

"Deja vu all over again" as the witless Reagan said.

Thing is, though, Bush is running out of fuel while Clinton is on a joy ride.

The contrast couldn’t have been more stark. On Friday, as Hillary Clinton was basking in the reaction to her marathon appearance before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, her communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, told reporters that the hour between nine and ten o’clock on Thursday night, after the hearing finally finished, was the campaign’s best fund-raising hour yet. And also on Friday, A.F.S.C.M.E., the largest public-sector union in the country, announced that it was endorsing Clinton for the Presidency—an important win in her tussle with Senator Bernie Sanders for the backing of organized labor. ...JohnCassidy,NewYorker

Cassidy points out that Jeb has a problem -- Donald Trump -- that Hillary doesn't have to worry about... at least not yet. I still sense that Trump is in the race as a spoiler. We'll see. Meanwhile, Trump is certainly anti-Bush.

There are still more than three months to go before the G.O.P. Iowa caucus, but if Bush is going to re-emerge as the front-runner, he’ll have to do a much better job of answering Trump’s charges. He’ll get his first opportunity this week, at the Republican debate in Boulder, Colorado. When the pressure was on this past week, at the first Democratic debate and then at the Benghazi hearing, Clinton rose to the occasion and gave her campaign a huge boost. Now, it’s Bush’s turn. “Jeb really needs a knockout performance—it needs to be all him with nobody even close,” a New Hampshire Republican told Politico. “Otherwise those fumes he’s on are going to evaporate even quicker.”...JohnCassidy,NewYorker

"Running on fumes" works very well as an image of certain campaigns. It's also a great description of our media these days with few exceptions. Or maybe it works best as a way of understanding America in the new millennium.